


Five Times Jace and Maia Hooked Up (and One Time They Didn't)

by oncethrown



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Hook-Up, Jace Feels, this is not the fic I pictured writing about these two when maia was first introduced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-19 04:16:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11305494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncethrown/pseuds/oncethrown
Summary: There are a million reasons they should stay away from each other.And yet...





	1. Back Alley

1\. Back Alley

 

He does it hoping she’ll hit him. 

 

The way the Inquisitor manipulated him isn’t an excuse. The fact that he hadn’t been the one to chip Maia, and had tried to stop it, doesn’t excuse anything. And it doesn’t change anything that he came here to un-chip her. 

 

At best, he’s the same fuck up he’s always been, at worst he’s a monster like his new grandmother. 

 

And even through the banter and the occasional moment between them— he knows Maia sees that part of him. She sees the rotten core under his stupid golden exterior, she’s hurt him before, and maybe a cracked rib or a ripped up cheek will let Jace focus on something besides how close his desperation and arrogance and incompetence brought them all to the brink of war. 

 

So when Maia says “prove it”, Jace grabs her, and kisses her and waits for her to push him back, waits for her eyes to turn green, and hopes that she’ll give him an injury to limp home with. 

 

The shove he was waiting for comes. The threatening quirk of her smile follows…but instead of green eyes and sharp claws, Jace feels Maia’s hands on his shoulders. Then her lips on his stomach. He’s already hard by the time she tells him it won’t mean anything. 

 

If she won’t hurt him, she can still use him. 

 

Anything, he thinks, as he reaches under her skirt, grabs her panties and yanks them down to her knees, anything is better than thinking right now. 


	2. Back Room

 

He’s back in the Hunter’s moon, and it’s because Clary kissed him. 

 

He knew, in his heart, that Clary wanted him. Would have left Simon for him if he’d gone to her right away. The instant connection they’d had… it was like all the classic books Valentine had made him read as a child. Love was like being pierced in the heart by an arrow. It was instant and couldn’t be undone— and here he was, wandering around months later, with that same Clary arrow run through him… and the Seelie Queen had forced Clary to plunge that arrow in just a little further into his heart.

 

And then she had still gone home with Simon.

 

It’s… Jace doesn’t even have a word for it. The Seelie Queen had enchanted them to be unable to leave until Clary kissed the one that she most desired. 

 

And she had kissed Jace. 

 

But she and Simon…had a connection. They’d known each other for years. They had been mundanes together, gotten dragged into the real world together. And Seelies… they twisted words. They made the truth do falsehood’s work. 

 

Maybe Clary did desire Jace. But maybe that wasn’t the same as not loving Simon. Maybe Simon was shitty in bed and she and Jace’s unconsummated interest in each other was still enough of a titillation to break a Seelie spell.  

 

Jace sits down at the bar. Maia is serving another customer. She makes the guy a drink, takes the tip with a smile. Then makes a drink for his friend. The two men leave the bar and three women come up, Maia serves all of them too. 

 

Finally, Jace is the only person at the bar without a drink. Maia comes over to him. 

 

“You look like a kicked dog.”

 

“You would know,” Jace counters.

 

“Don’t talk to me like that in my fucking bar,” Maia counters sharply. “Shadowhunter.”

 

Jace feels his shoulders drop further. He has to be better than this. It’s like he’s not even trying. 

 

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

 

Maia looks at him expectantly for a moment. 

 

“I am trying not to be an asshole all the time.”

 

“Just when you’re here?” Maia asks. Jace doesn’t answer, and she softens a little. “What are you drinking?”

 

Jace looks to see what’s on tap and is about to order something dark and bitter when his masochistic side gets the better of him. “Do I have enough time to drink a pint before you get off?”

 

Maia eyes him analytically. “I’m done with work at 11:30.” She makes a show of checking her watch. “But I haven’t taken my break yet. You could go get on your knees in the backroom and I could _get off_ now.”

 

Her tone is feather light and so casual Jace almost wonders if he imagined it until she leans over and opens the little gate separating the back of the bar from the front. 

 

“Third door on the left,” Maia says. 

 

Jace makes a show of not hurrying, but he’s damn well already on his knees when she walks in.


	3. Apartment

Raphael drops down at the edge of the bar. Maia finishes the drink she’s making and starts immediately on Raphael’s usual. B neg with just a touch of cayenne pepper and port. It sounds awful to her, but she’s hardly a connesiuer of blood herself. 

 

Raphael is staring at his phone as Maia brings the drink to him, but he pulls a tip out of his jacket as she sets down the drink, and hold the crisp bill out to her. She takes the proffered edge, but as she starts to pull it from Raphael’s grip, he looks up at her in confusion. His grip on the bill tightens, and she can’t pull it away. 

 

“You smell like Jace Herondale.”

 

Maia feels a tingle along the back of her hands. The first drip of an adrenaline rush. She’d forgotten to shower after her shift last night. A serious faux-pas in a downworld bar. Raphael wouldn’t be the only person who could smell Shadowhunter on her, but probably a precious few would be able to narrow down which Shadowhunter. 

 

She yanks the bill toward herself and Raphael lets go. 

 

“He keeps coming in here,” Maia said. “I’m not sure if its arrogance or masochism.”

 

“Both, I would guess,” Raphael said. He took a sip from his glass, and sighed appreciatively. “You always get this drink perfect you know.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“I would never say anything to embarrass a lady, especially one I admire as much as you,” Raphael started, his voice just loud enough for Maia to here him over all the other noise and conversation in the bar. “But the particular scent on you is not a… casual sort of smell.” 

 

A vampire’s sense of smell is much stronger and more attuned than werewolves, but Raphael is not going to believe Maia if she feigns ignorance. 

 

Instead she opts for denial. What the hell should Raphael care if Maia is banging every Shadowhunter in the Institute?

 

“Jace Herondale killed most of my pack,” She says. “Why would I want anything to do with him?”

 

It’s a phrase she’s been repeating to herself. A helpful justification for why she keeps allowing herself to take advantage of Jace despite the fact that he's clearly going through something right now.

 

“He didn't know that touching the sword would kill those people.”

 

“Doesn't make them less dead.”

 

“He thought he could destroy the sword by touching it. And he thought it would kill him to do so.”

 

Maia finds a glass to clean and it takes her a moment to think of a reply. “Who told you that?”

 

“Isabelle.”

 

Maia sets down the clean glass and picks up another. “And why are you telling me this?”

 

Raphael takes a sip from his drink. “There’s something about this new batch of Shadowhunters at the New York Institute. They’re… intoxicating. I think we are all heading into unprecedented territory. And I think that downworlders should be looking out for each other right now.”

 

“I can take care of myself,” Maia tells him, no real bite behind the words. 

 

“I have no doubts about that.” Raphael raises his glass to her, and meanders off into one of the many dark corners the Hunter’s Moon has to offer. 

 

***

_Don’t get a lot of Shadowhunters in here._

 

It was one of the first things Maia had said to Jace, in a beautiful, and simpler time, when it had still been true. 

 

Now they seem to be trailing in and out all the damn time, and Isabelle Lightwood has just walked in with some pointy cheekboned bastard who makes Maia’s hair stand on end. 

 

She meets Isabelle’s chit chat with as much amiability as she can muster, and, in the brief exchange that passes between them as she pours them a glass of wine— Red for Isabelle, their best Pinot Grigio for Sebastian— learns that Clary and Simon have broken up, and Sebastian is the only Shadowhunter to ever just appear out of nowhere, with no Clave orders. 

 

She figures that doesn’t bode well, but mostly she just wants to be away from them both. She’ll text Luke about it later. He used to be a Shadowhunter, maybe it isn’t as weird as it seems. 

 

For just a moment, she considers texting Jace… but if Simon and Clary have really broken up, Jace is probably off somewhere mooning at her. And he’s the type of arrogant prick who could’t accept that a text about his creepy new friend was really just that. 

 

Maia pours herself a shot. 

 

***

A couple days more pass before she sees Jace again. He appears at the end of the alley as she's throwing out the trash on her way home from her shift.

 

There's a chill in the air, and Jace is dressed against it. A longer than usual leather jacket and a big scarf. 

 

Maia walks past him, and after a few steps he follows. 

 

“I heard about Clary and Simon,” she says. 

 

“So did I,” Jace says. “That’s not why I’m here.”

 

Maia spins to face him, the reply nearly on her lips. Easy and harsh. _So why are you here?_

 

But she can see exactly why he’s here in his eyes. 

 

Pain. 

 

He’s hurting and he’s lost and he’s staring at her like…

 

She’s not sure. She’s had guys stare at her in all sorts of ways. Like she’s a fix, like she’s a goddess. 

 

Mostly, Jace just looks tired. And hurt. 

 

She feels like she should say no on principle. No, she’s not his go-to stop to not feel all that big Shadowhunter drama for a while. No, she’s not around to be second best to Clary, who Jace really wants but can’t seem to lock down for some reason. 

 

But she doesn’t want to say no. Maia meant what she said to Simon, she is starting to get Jace. She can understand a need to… go to someone when things aren’t going right. Even if it’s not serious. Even if it’s just casual sex. 

 

She’s got her own shit that could use the casual sex treatment, and mostly… if Jace is that good up against a wall, and that good kneeling between a couple boxes of gin, it would really be a shame to never find out what he can do when he has an entire bed to work with. 

 

***

 

He doesn’t disappoint. 

 

Maia’s already come twice by the time she’s let Jace prop her up against some pillows, and she’s not sure if she can come a third time. Jace is kneeling between her legs, buried inside her at that very dangerous angle where a thrust has to be perfect to not be painful. But his every stroke is slow and deep and steady, letting the pleasure build and build before it unleashes. 

 

And it’s definitely building, but in that weird mostly outside way, where it just doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere this time. 

 

Jace drops to kiss her neck— the side with no scar—and Maia wraps her legs loosely around his hips. 

 

“Please, please tell me you’re getting close,” he chokes against her shoulder. 

 

“It’s fine,” Maia pants back. “Go ahead.”

 

Jace lets out a shaky breath, thrusts a few more times, then stops. But instead of shuddering forward to finish, Jace drops his hand to the mattress on either side of Maia’s stomach, and forces himself backward, sliding out of her and dropping his face to her stomach in one movement. 

 

He starts to kiss downward, the drag of his stubbled chin across her stomach feels like pop rocks in the summer. 

 

“Again?” Maia laughs. 

 

He replies with action, rather than words and Maia digs her hands into his hair and lets herself sink into the pleasure of his mouth on her, until her thigh muscles start to go tight under Jace’s big, warm palms. 

 

He rises back up like a crashing tide, and slides into her just as easy as she comes again, her nails digging into the flesh of his arms before her whole body goes slack and drips over the edges of the pillows underneath her while Jace howls his way through his own release. 

 

With surprising gentleness, Jace sinks down on top of her. He buries his face in her neck again, and jimmies an arm under her back. With a laugh, she wraps an arm around his back too. 

 

It’s a weird little moment. For a split second, it nearly feels like they started this as friends. Or, if not friends, at least as people who hadn’t violently fought each other several times over the summer. 

 

Maia sighs and lets her hand fall off of Jace. Jace cautiously moves backward, dropping onto his haunches and wiping the sweat from his chest. Maia glances at the clock and lets out a groan. She can’t remember the last time she had sex for this long. 

 

Jace clears his throat. “Yeah. It’s late for me too.” 

 

He spins, letting his legs hang off one side of the bed, and grabs his clothes off the floor. Maia doesn’t correct his interpretation of her reaction to the time. Just watches him get dressed. 

 

When Jace stands, Maia gathers the covers around her, and walks him to the door, where they part with a kiss. She locks the door behind him and, wrapping the sheet more tightly against the chill of the night, makes herself a bowl of cereal, and eats it in bed. 


	4. Netflix and Chill

 

“Maia,” Jace manages through his surprise when he walks into the ops center and sees her standing near the map table. “You… have gear.”

 

She does have gear. A black leather jacket, stiff with a sort of thin armor. It’s the kind of thing that Shadowhunters go out in for their first few missions. Technically everyone is always supposed to wear it, but almost no one does.

 

 It’s not just the gear that strikes Jace and he looks at her, while trying to to look at her. Her hair is pulled back away from her face into a sort of large poof at the top of her head. Jace has never seen her with her hair back, and can’t help but think that it makes her look younger. Sweet. He’s also never seen her without any jewelry, no earrings, no necklaces.

 

He has seen the brigh blue glow of the map interface shining on her skin before, but he’s never noticed how much it looks like moonlight. 

 

 Jace catches that thought as best he can and pushes it away. It’s not the sort of thing you think about with a girl you are just fooling around with. And Maia has made it clear that it is just fooling around, and nothing else. Jace has never stayed at her place, he’s only comes to the Hunter’s moon when he knows she is getting off work soon, and they never text about anything other than meeting up later. 

 

Maia rolls her eyes. “Alec insisted on the gear. And the hair. And the lack of earrings. Which is ridiculous because… you know. I can turn into a wolf.”

 

“Alec,” Jace manages. “Alec…”

 

“Didn’t tell you I’m on the mission tonight. Did he?”

 

Jace shakes his head. “No. He failed to mention it.”

 

Maia flashes that smile on him, the one that makes him weak. “It’s okay. I’m sure you’ll be able to keep up with me.”

 

A laugh bursts out of Jace. “Keep up with _you_?” 

 

“Yeah,” Maia replies with just a hint of the challenging curl to her lip that had gotten Jace to fuck her for a third time in a row a couple days ago. She doesn’t seem to know it though. 

 

“Oh, by the way,” she reaches into one of the big pockets on the pants she must have borrowed from someone at the Institute. “You forgot your magic wand at my place.”

 

Jace forces his surprise away and pulls the stele out of her hand as casually as possible. Even with all of the changes Alec is making, it is not a good idea to let anyone see a werewolf with a stele. 

 

“Maia!” he hears behind him. Clary’s sharp, clear voice, much too close not to have see Maia pull Jace’s stele from her pocket and hand it to him. 

 

Not too wrapped up in Simon anymore to wonder how Maia came to have such a thing on her person. 

 

“Hey, Clary.” Maia says to Clary.  Jace tries not to let himself wonder if the wattage on her smile is different for Clary.  He and Maia are just…acquaintances. The same as Clary and Maia, though with very different…uh…shared activities.

 

“The thigh holster looks good on you,” Clary tells her with a laugh.

 

“I’ve been assured that the thigh holster looks good on everyone,” Alec declares as he walks into the little gathered at the outside of the op center. “Demons aren’t going to go easy on you because of it though. I need everyone’s head in the game tonight. Let’s move out.”

 

* * *

 

Somehow it’s both maddening and a huge relief that Maia doesn’t act odd at all during the mission. She doesn’t flirt, she doesn’t lose focus. When a demon launches onto Clary, Jace jumps after it, losing his footing while trying to avoid Clary’s wild stab toward the monster. 

Maia slides forward, jams her own taser wand into the creatures neck and brings it down without so much as winking at him. 

 

It may be a relief. It may be annoying. It’s for sure one of the hottest things he has ever seen. 

 

They’re closer to Maia’s apartment than the Institute and Jace easily comes up with an excuse to get out of following Clary and Alec back. He can tell Alec thinks there’s something going on, but he doesn’t push it. 

 

And Maia doesn’t seem to mind him following her home again. 

 

* * *

 

 

Maia is so warm. Jace finds himself pulling her tighter and tighter with every little gust of cold air that leaks through her old fashioned windows and chills the sweat on his chest. 

 

They had sex twice after the mission, the first time up against Maia’s front door, the second time in the bed, with Maia riding him so hard and fast he’s still not sure how in the hell he managed to last long enough. 

 

Maia reaches for her nightstand with a groan, and pushes closer to Jace as she turns back, two remotes in hand. “Do Shadowhunters get Netflix?”

 

“We’re more readers than movie watchers.”

 

“Hmm,” Maia replies, turning the TV on. 

 

This is new, Jace thinks, the muscles in his back starting to tense. He and Maia have been fooling around for more than a month now, and while it is always exciting, they are developing something of a routine. Their paths cross somewhere, by accident or design, they have sex, not always more than once, but usually, and then Maia has a shift to get to. Or Jace has a mission. Or it’s late. Sometimes Maia just gets up to shower and Jace sees himself out. 

 

She’s never turned on the TV and laid her head back on his shoulder like this. 

 

Her hair smells like honey. 

 

“Orange Is the New Black or Luke Cage?” she asks. 

 

“I don’t know what either of those things are.”

 

“Luke Cage is a super-hero with unbreakable skin and Orange is the New Black is a show about a women’s prison that doesn’t get interesting until they stop pretending that anyone in the audience gives a damn about the white girl.”

 

A laugh, a deep one, rumbles out of Jace’s chest. “I’ll let you choose.” 

 

“They’ve both got hour long episodes. Sure you don’t have to report back to anyone at the Institute? Give them your location? Your coordinates?”

 

“That’s the same thing.”

 

“I know that, Jace.”

 

Jace forces himself to sink back against Maia’s somewhat worn, light blue sheets and relax. “Sorry. Yeah. I guess I should check my phone, just in case, but… um. I can stay.” He stops himself from adding _if you want me to_. 

 

Maia turns on an episode of Orange is the New Black. 

 

* * *

 

 

“I like Miss Claudette,” Jace says as the theme song starts to play. “Is that weird? She murdered someone in cold blood.”

 

“No. I like her too. You’re supposed to like them, that’s the whole point. Besides, she’s totally justified. After what that guy did to the girl in her care?”

 

“The girl she’s already human trafficking?”

 

“You’re such a fucking Shadowhunter. I’ll grant you the power dyn—“

 

“Hey, no. I know. I know that it’s different,” Jace cuts in. Tonight has been going so well, he doesn’t want to piss Maia off. “I just said I like her, didn’t I?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, you did,” Maia says with a sigh, her raised hackles sinking back down. 

 

Jace cautiously inches a little closer to her. “Should we watch the next episode? The… chickening? What’s a chickening?”

 

Maia yawned, stretched, and grabbed her phone off the nightstand. “Oh, fuck. No. We shouldn’t. It’s 3:30 in the morning, Jace.”

 

“Shit. I should get dressed.”

 

He starts to get up, but Maia presses her hand into his chest and pushes him back down. 

 

“I’m not going to make you walk halfway across the city in the middle of the night. Stay.”

 

Jace licks his lips. 

 

The thing about really amazing sex, is that it doesn’t end when you pull apart. You can keep riding that high for hours. And hours of that happy warm feeling can be confusing. 

 

It is late. And several cozy hours of warm skin and honey scented hair and peaceful… togetherness have passed. 

 

It’s tempting to read more into this. 

 

“I don’t… usually stay,” Jace finally says. 

 

“We’ll. You don’t have to,” Maia replies. It should sound harsh, but there’s no bite to her words. She just sounds warm and tired. And Jace is so warm and tired. 

 

“I’ll stay. I’ll. Um… stay.”


	5. Between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a watered down and bastardized spoiler for City of Glass in here. I sincerely doubt they'd do it on the show, and it wouldn't be anything like this if they did.

Jace shuts the door behind her as soon as they step inside and Maia stifles a laugh into her hand trying to focus on the fun, stupid, illicit thrill of being snuck into a boy’s bedroom as a grown ass woman. 

 

It’s fun. 

 

These little hookups here and there with Jace have always been fun, but since it all started a few months ago it’s turned from an exhaustingly ironic form of power playing, to always satisfying, but never serious sex— to today. Maia grinning at her phone during some dorky text flirting and wanting to see Jace enough that Maia had taken the train all the fucking way up here. 

 

Jace laughs back, lunges forward and wraps his arms around Maia’s waist. Her own arms go to his broad shoulders of their own accord.  She’s had so much practice it’s muscle memory. 

 

He lifts her effortlessly, brings her to his bed and lowers her down, sinking on top of her. Muscle memory also pushes her legs open, so the warm broadness of Jace can fall between them. 

 

But there are other memories here in the Institute that are making it hard to just melt into the kiss Jace is pressing to her neck. Like the way that old crow faced bitch had looked at Maia while she declared that Maia must have killed a Shadowhunter. Or the look on Simon’s face when he’d told her that he’d been banned from going to Clary’s mother’s funeral. 

 

And just at the back of her head there’s more about Simon. She’d sent Simon off after Clary because that’s what he’d really wanted. And Simon had sent himself off after a few of the more vampiric forms of self destruction for a little while, because Clary had still wanted Jace. 

 

And Maia’s not sure she knows what Jace wants. 

 

If he wanted Clary, surely he would have done something about it by now. And if Clary wanted him, she was probably just waiting for some prescribed shame period between leaving Simon and pursuing Jace. 

 

Jace comes up from her neck, digs his hands underneath her and stops. 

 

“Is something wrong?”

 

Maia shakes her head and sets her hands to his shoulders. She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and drops her head back, trying to find words that won’t be untrue, but also won’t waste all the effort they both put in to sneaking into the Institute to have sex on Jace’s giant, ridiculously nice bed. 

 

“It’s weirder to be in the Institute than I thought it would be,” Maia sighs. She’s not going to bring up the whole Clary and Simon and Jace thing. That’s not what she signed up for. She pushed Jace into an alley wall and told him it didn’t mean anything. 

 

“Oh,” Jace says. His face goes soft, the way it has been lately. It’s a new enough expression that it’s still strange to see it. Jace as just… neutral. Not angry or hurting or sad. Just Jace. “Okay. Well. I mean… Alec lifted all the Clave’s stupid rules about downworlders.”

 

Maia nods. “Right. I know.”

 

She bites back the next thing she wants to say. About how Alec changing the policy doesn’t make her any more welcome here than she was when she and Simon were thrown in jail. But she stops herself. It hadn’t been Jace’s idea to sneak her in. She had all but insisted. There were too many shifty, prying shadowhunter eyes in here. And sneaking in had been fun. 

 

And now it was time for the next fun part. 

 

And just because she’s starting to feel like maybe this does all mean more than she ever expected, it doesn’t change the fact that Clary and Jace are free agents. 

 

And Shadowhunters always chose their own. 

 

She smiles up at Jace, sets a hand to his cheek and pulls him back down into a kiss. 

 

They’ve done this enough times now that there’s no need to rush. They both know exactly where they’re going and exactly how to get each other there. 

 

Their clothes peel away like in an old novel. They fall like snow, or fall leaves or rose petals. So gently and easily Maia can’t help but laugh at herself for hardly noticing them go. Her second guessing and reservations fall with them. Somehow the ghosts and shadows fall away, and it’s just she and Jace again. 

 

They scoot up on the bed. Jace fumbles in his nightstand for a condom. The suffusing calm and warmth is interrupted for a moment as he tears the foil and a much stronger scent of latex than Maia’s brand of condoms has permeates the air between them. 

 

It’s over soon though as Jace puts it on and resumes the lazy kiss that’s been rolling back and forth between them since they stopped talking. Maia reaches down and guides him inside of her with a sigh. 

 

He doesn’t fuck her like it doesn’t mean anything anymore. 

 

And she’s got her hands in his hair and she knows the rhythm they fall into so well by now that her hips are already rocking in harmony with his. She’s kissing his neck in the exact spot that makes him growl, and he’s pulling her leg up around his waist, seeking out the angle she likes. 

 

Jace settles backward, and effortlessly catches Maia’s leg under her knee, brings  it over his shoulder and kisses the part he knows is ticklish. Maia laughs, squirms and then moans when he pushes in deep. 

 

When she opens her eyes, she finds herself staring into Jace’s. 

 

His eyes are so fucking amazing, and she has fallen in too deep. 

 

* * *

 

 

Maia’s head is heavy on Jace’s shoulder and he’s starting to drift off. 

 

“Can I ask you something… a little dark?” She whispers.

 

“Uh, sure, I guess.”

 

“So… you’re the stolen Herondale royalty. You’ve got the lux room, the big promotion—”

 

“Temporary, completely fucked up promotion,” Jace says with a yawn, working a little further down the mattress and pulling at a sheet underneath them. 

 

“Not disagreeing,” Maia replies. “The point is, you have pull and If I were you, after everything Valentine put you through,” Maia sighs, rolls a little further up onto her side and sets her hand to his chest. “If I were you I would be using that new Herondale influence to push the Clave to execute him.”

 

Jace looks up at the ceiling. “I guess I haven't really thought about it like that.”

 

“Really? At all?”

 

“Well. Unlike some people in this bed, a revenge execution is not my first reaction to everything.”

 

Maia lets out a rueful laugh and starts tracing her finger tips along the stamina rune on Jace’s chest. “I _have been_ considering some of the constructive criticism I have received on that impulse.”

 

“I… it’s hard to explain. It’s like… the Clave has already decided not to punish him for crimes against the downworld, and since I gave Alec the Institute I don’t really feel like I have much room to push them… But I also… I don’t know how to get mad at him.”

 

“Jace…” Maia starts, soft and sad. “He killed your pets. He broke your fingers. And that ship—“

 

“I know,” Jace cuts her off. “I know how bad it is, and I hear how much worse it sounds out loud, I just. Whenever I try to feel angry about it, I can’t. It’s like… trying to hear a small sound over a wall of white noise. I can’t find any feeling to hold onto and it’s like… there aren’t any feelings there to find. So I just… don’t try anymore.”

 

Maia shakes her head  at him, and brushes his hair back from his face with a whispered. “Fucking Shadowhunters.”

 

“Emotions are a weakness” Jace replies. 

 

Maia opens her mouth like she’s going to argue, but pulls her teeth across her bottom lip and is quiet for a few moments before saying,“Well. If you don't feel anything about it, you could still try to nudge the Clave. It would help Alec a lot.”

 

“And your pack,” Jace adds, no feeling behind the words. The warmth of Maia in these moments make him pleasantly sluggish and unguarded, which is probably how he wound up telling her so many things he never tells people. 

 

“I’m not going to deny that,” Maia says. 

 

A weird little bud of satisfaction blooms in Jace’s chest. He leans into a sloppy, unhurried kiss— just as his bedroom door crashes open. 

 

In a matter of seconds, Maia’s on her feet, Jace has the seraph blade from his night stand in his hand, and Alec is slamming the door shut behind him and throwing the bolt across.

 

As soon as she registers Alec, Maia slides back into the bed and pulls the sheet over her body, embarrassed, but unashamed. 

 

“Alec, what the hell—”

 

Alec throws up a hand. “Not now. Get into gear.”

 

It's a tone Jace recognizes, and he’s already up and pulling his clothes back on. “What happened?”

 

“An attack in the ops center.”

 

It's only then that Jace realizes that Alec is sweating and flush. There’s a bloody gash across his arm and his knuckles are white around the blade in his hand.  “It was Sebastian. It’s like he just snapped. We found Terwits, dead in a hallway. I was headed into the ops center to engage a lock down. He grabbed Clary and said he was taking her somewhere. Duncan and Lindsey went after him, and he killed them both. And then … the weirdest portal I’ve ever seen opened up right there in the ops center and he jumped into it.”

 

“With Clary?” 

 

“Yeah.”

 

“How can I help?” Maia asks as Jace pulls on his jacket. 

 

Alec turns to her, and pauses for the first time since he stormed in. “You can lock the door behind us when we go.”

 

“Alec—“ Jace protests.

 

“No. I’ve got three dead shadowhunters, and a traitor who could be in league with Valentine, more than enough tension in the downworld and the Clave primed to move in and set everything back 200 years!” Alec pulls a dagger from his belt and hands it to Maia. “After we leave, bolt the door, and hide. If anyone comes in here, try to avoid wolfing out unless you have to, and do not— _do not_ —leave this room unless your life is in immediate danger.”

 

Maia takes the dagger, glancing from Alec to Jace before she sets it on the nightstand next to her and leans over to scoop her own clothes off the floor. 

 

“Ready?” Alec asks Jace. 

 

Jace nods and walks across the room toward Alec, as Alec opens the door.

 

He glances back at Maia. The light from the lamp behind her catches in her curls, making her look like a painting of a saint, and Jace is realizing he should kiss her good bye as Alec elbows him, and the two of them leave his bedroom to creep down the hall.

* * *

 

“Did Alec Fucking Lightwood just give me order?” Maia asks herself, as she slides her panties back on and and hunts around Jace’s room for her bra. 

 

He had, she has to admit. Taking orders from a Shadowhunter was pretty galling, but of all the Shadowhunters she’d ever heard bark out orders, at least Alec’s had seemed worth following. She checks the old fashion bar crossing the door again, and the lock, then finishes dressing. 

 

Fully dressed, she drops down onto the rumpled bed, feeling entirely surplus to requirements. The Shadowhunters are in the midst of a crisis that does not affect her. She probably can’t safely leave the Institute without Alec inside it. And, knowing Shadowhunters, Alec and Jace had probably put some sort of rune on the door to stop her from leaving. 

 

Being locked away is not… helping anything. She’s trying to push the little bubble of fear moving in her throat down when she hears running feet in the hallway, then hears them pass by Jace’s bedroom door. 

 

A distraction. She needs a distraction. She retrieves her purse from beside the door, and digs her phone out of it, only to find the battery dead. 

 

Jace’s room is mostly empty. Bed. Work out equipment. A nightstand on either side of the bed. A phone charger hangs over the corner of the nightstand on the right side of the bed, but it’s the wrong kind of adapter. 

 

Maia let’s out a sigh that feels hobbled by the building lump in her throat, then notices the only thing in the room that looks like Jace purposefully picked it out and brought it into his space. 

 

There’s a copy of Jane Eyre on the nightstand.

 

She pulls it to her flops on to her stomach, and pulls in deep breaths of the scent of Jace’s sheets as she begins to read. 

 

* * *

 

 

Running after a maniac who might kill Clary isn’t the right place to talk about what Alec walked in on. Alec doesn’t ask, Jace doesn’t offer. 

 

It’s not until they get to Magnus’s, and they have to wait for him to track Clary that the white-noise of too many feelings starts to overpower Jace. He can’t stop thinking about the explosion of seeing Clary for the first time and the pain of wanting her and knowing he could never have her.  Of the simple agony of seeing her with Simon and the unbearable swamp of feelings caused by seeing her without Simon and knowing that there was no longer a reason they couldn’t be together. 

 

And every time he feels like he’s centered down on feeling that will let him go forward and make the noise in his head stop— that he needs to save Clary because she’s not a strong enough fighter to face Sebastian, or that he has to save her because there have been too many deaths lately, or just because it’s what he does— his thoughts go back to Maia. 

 

Alec had wanted to rune the door shut, but Jace had stopped him. Maia had bad history with locked rooms, and he couldn’t do that to her. He hoped that the fact that she was stuck in a bedroom would over power the fact that she was still stuck. And she was safe there. Safer than Clary was.  

 

Unless someone in the Institute, panicked and angry, let prejudice take over and hurt her just for being a werewolf in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

 

That thought just cycles him back to Clary, who is somehow untraceable, and with a murderer.  

 

Everything in Jace’s head just gets louder and harder to control the longer Magnus works, muttering to himself in a score of languages Jace doesn’t speak and a few he’s never heard before. 

 

Part of Jace can’t stop imagining saving Clary from Sebastian. How she’d fall into his arms and look at him like she had that first time, when he’d killed that demon in her mother’s loft. But whenever he sees Clary like that in his minds eye, it becomes Maia smiling up at him across her pillows sweaty and happy and soft. Still responding to him when he speaks even though her eyes are closed. Then Clary again, kissing him in the Seelie Court. 

 

Both of them. “This means nothing.”

 

“She’s in Idris, in the Brocelind Forest, on the shore of Lake Lyn,” Magnus suddenly announces, already throwing a portal up against his windows.

 

* * *

 

 

Sebastian isn’t alone and the terrain is bad. Jace is fighting for his life, fighting as hard as he can. He sees Alec, blood shining on his face. Magnus, throwing magic that Sebastian somehow is managing to block or outmaneuver. 

 

The Mortal Cup. The Soul Sword. And the Lost Mirror. 

 

Not so lost anymore. 

 

With those three mortal instruments, a shadowhunter can call down the Angel Raziel himself, and ask for one thing. 

 

Valentine had the cup. Sebastian had the sword. 

 

The mirror is the fucking lake outside of Idris and a hundred generations of Shadowhunters have just been that fucking stupid, Jace thinks to himself as he stabs his seraph blade through his opponent, and watches him drop to the ground. 

 

The two non-geographic feature mortal instruments are sitting on the scummy brown sand of the shore. Clary is unconscious next to them. Valentine is dead next to her. 

 

Jace runs toward Alec and Magnus, who are trying to fight back both Sebastian and his cronies. 

 

As Jace runs, Magnus throws a ball of magic at Sebastian. Inexplicably, impossibly, Sebastian catches it. Magnus freezes with shock. So much so that he doesn’t see the swordsman coming for him. 

 

Alec does. He screams Magnus’s name as the man behind him swings the sword back, ready to power his strike. 

 

It’s the pain in Alec’s voice that makes Jace do it. Do it without a second thought. The wave of feelings crowds out all the rational thought in his mind and Jace jumps.

 

Right between Magnus and the blade. The last thing he feels is the sword edge moving through his spine.

 

He’s dead before he hits the ground. 

 

* * *

 

They’ve been gone a long time, Maia thinks, then forces the thought away. Jace is going to be fine. He’s supposed to be the best shadowhunter of his generation, it turns out he has weird extra angel powers, and he’s basically royalty out of nowhere. 

 

He can beat Sebastian. 

 

Maybe she should have said something about her suspicions sooner. 

 

But maybe no one would have listened to a werewolf’s opinion on a sketchy shadowhunter.

 

Maybe she should have kissed him before he left.

 

There’s a sick feeling building in her stomach, sour and insistent and no matter how much she tries to attribute it to being stuck in this room, or to the fact that coffee and a croissant isn’t a real lunch, the longer she’s stuck here, face down in Jace’s bed, struggling to pay attention to one of her favorite books, the more the truth weighs on her. 

 

She is so worried about Jace. 

 

* * *

 

 

There’s darkness first. Awareness of nothing, but awareness none the less. 

 

Then sound.  It’s Alec crying. He shouldn’t be doing that. Everything is fine. 

 

Touch is next. There’s warmth underneath him, but it’s uncomfortable. He’s bent over something too small to hold him up. 

 

“Oh god, he’s breathing,” A voice says. “Oh god.”

 

Jace feels warm hands with little bites of cold— rings, he realizes belatedly— wrap around his arm. 

 

“Don’t move him again, don’t move him,” Alec insists roughly. 

 

A strange sensation moves over his body as scent comes back. Magic, Jace realizes. 

 

He can smell water. Wet sand. The smell of clean air that has never been near a city. There’s another smell, and it takes Jace a moment to realize that it’s blood. 

 

He opens his eyes to gasps. 

 

Alec’s eyes are red, his cheeks shining with tears. His hand is wrapped around Magnus’s shoulder, knuckles bone white. Magnus’s makeup is a mess. His hair and clothes are singed. 

 

“Jace!”

 

It’s a woman’s voice. It’s above him. Jace tilts his head backward, only to be blinded by light. The silhouette of a woman’s head, lit from behind by the moon. 

 

Like a painting of a saint. 

 

Jace reaches up to touch her face, but it feels strange and angular in his palm. A long smooth line of hair tickles down his fore arm, and he drops his hand away from it, back down to his chest. 

 

It’s Clary, he remembers. 

 

She isn’t who he wants to see. 

 

A rush of conversation is happening around him. There’s crying and demanding and Magnus keeps repeating something about a ritual. Eventually Alec helps Jace to his feet. Alec ducks under one arm, Magnus under the other, and they all step into the portal. 

* * *

 

“That’s it,” Maia announces to page 90 of Jane Eyre. “I am a known friend to the Institute. Alec has sent me out on missions. I am walking out there and demanding to know what is going on.”

 

She slams the books shut, tosses it up to the head of Jace’s bed and goes to his bedroom door where she pulls her shoes back onto her feet. 

 

She reaches for the door knob, only to have it pull away from her. 

 

Jace stands in the door frame. He’s grimy and gross. His pants are covered in some sort of reddish brown grit, so are the ends of his hair. 

 

He reeks like the dumpster behind a butcher’s. 

 

Maia launches forward, and wraps her arms tightly around him, sighing in relief when he melts down into her. 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s leaning against the wall of his shower, forehead pressed against the pleasantly cool tile while Maia washes the blood off of him. He can tell by the way she sucked her teeth when he turned around that it’s way more blood than he was imagining. Her hands are gentle and through as she works the water over his body, and he tries to explain to her, in terms as gentle as her hands on his body, that he was killed, and Alec killed Sebastian and used the Mortal Instruments to bring Jace back to life. 

 

She doesn’t seem to know what to say. She just keeps washing him. Jace watches the water on the white tile below him. Watches it turn from dark reddish brown, like clay, to a lighter red, like wine, and slowly less and less pink. When the water finally washes away clear, Maia slides her hands into his hair and starts to wash that too. 

 

“I thought I saw you,” Jace whispers. “When I came back. I thought you were the first thing I saw.”

 

He hears a sob behind him, and feels Maia’s body press against him, arms wrapped around his waist, her face pressed to his neck. 

 

They stand like that until the water runs cold. 


	6. The First Time

 

The sun is bright and the wind is cool on her skin. She settles back against the sun warmed concrete, looking out at all the people in the park. Rollerskaters in neon yoga pants. Little kids holding onto the collars of dogs bigger than they are. A couple guys in suits, eating sandwhiches on benches. 

 

It’s strange for her to be out during the day like this. That’s the life of a bartender. 

 

A sudden flash of gold catches her eye: Jace coming around a corner into the sunlight. She realizes that she’s never seen him in the sunlight before. He smiles when he sees her, and she can’t help but echo it. 

 

He brought flowers. 

 

“Hi,” Jace says breathlessly. He jerks the small bouquet of tulips between them like it’s a shield. A laugh bubbles out of Maia, she takes the flowers and presses a kiss to his lips. He loosens up under her touch. When they pull apart he’s smiling.

 

“Flowers?” Maia asks. “Really?”

 

His mouth works for a moment, before his face is overtaken by a sheepish grin. He looks up at the sky. 

 

“I have absolutely no idea how to do a first date,” he admits. 

 

Maia smiles and takes his hand. He squeezes her fingers. 

 

“Coffee is typical. We could go get a coffee and walk around the park.” 

 

“Coffee,” Jace repeats. “Like a fancy coffee?”

 

Maia laughs at him again. “Wow. You are hopeless. Come on. We’re going to go get cappuccinos. You’ll like it.”

 

“Anything you say.”

 

 

 


	7. (Secret Deleted Scene)

“How do I look?”

 

It occurs to Jace much too late that he has posed this question to entirely the wrong two people. Alec’s expression is a mix of annoyance and boredom and Magnus’s quirked eyebrow and smirk shatters what little confidence Jace had in the button up shirt and black pants he’d picked out after going through everything in his closet. 

 

“Jace, we’re in the middle of planning a serious meeting between the—“

 

Magnus sets a hand to Alec’s chest, silencing him. “Alexander, please don’t ruin this for me.”

 

Alec rolls his eyes, grabs a stack of papers off of his desk and leans back in his chair, uninterested as Magnus prowls up to Jace, one hand raised, a glow of magic already in his palm. 

 

Only then does Jace realize how serious a mistake he has made.


End file.
